Where are Women in Technical Design?
“So, what is it actually like to be a female in engineering?”
A couple days ago, a prospective student waited until the end of my campus tour to ask this question one on one. As I began my response, my mind skipped to the countless times I’ve addressed this query asked by girls just like her. At this point, my answer is crafted. While I have never felt out of place or unwelcome as a women in our McCormick School of Engineering, there are times when there is an apparent lack of female presence.
The undergraduate population in McCormick is 30% female. This ratio may be shockingly unbalanced, but is still double the national average. I’ve experienced mechanical engineering lab sections where I’m the only female in a group of 13 and small project groups with no other female members. But, within my major concentration of Manufacturing and Design, there is a more equal presence than the initial statistic above. The background thoughts of being consistently outnumbered by male colleagues fade when I enter into my design classes. I figured this comfort would also follow me into the professional world of design. Recently, I realized that I may be wrong.
Last week I attended Design: Chicago, an event at Northwestern through the Kellogg School of Management and the McCormick School of Engineering that focuses on accomplished designers and their companies. I’ve attended this event for the past four years, but this year I noted a striking observation. As I have begun to consider how important corporate diversity is in my near future, I noticed the lack thereof in the speakers and panelists presenting at this event. The speaker introducers were male, the Deans of both Kellogg and McCormick are male, and all three panelists were male. This observation was especially troubling when the co-founder of Umbra, Paul Rowan, put up a slide introducing the design team of the new Umbra Shift collection. The slide of 12 accomplished designers featured only one woman, who was one half of a design duo. That got me thinking about how most alums I’ve reached out to in the design field are male, most of my professors are male, and when it comes down to it, the majority of my fellow students are male.
After the event there was a reception where I was chatting with some of my fellow classmates who study design. As students, we stood a little removed from the incredibly talented professionals interacting around us. Suddenly Paul, the speaker who made such an impression on me earlier, walked over to my friend Bryan and I and asked “What did you think?”. I wish I could have better articulated how much I appreciated the outright cool and fresh collection he presented earlier, but I was more excited to ask the question I was thinking about all night, “Where are the women on your design team?” He was immediately taken off guard. After taking a moment to process the question, he responded by saying there are many talented women designers out there, but there were simply more men in the pool than women. He stressed that he wanted to see more women so he can hire more (obviously prompting me to want to shout “Here! Right here, I need a job.”). Coming from a STEM major where comparatively there is a strong representation of women, I knew there were women interested in and studying the field of technical design. But where were they in the workforce? To look into this further, I read into the more communications heavy field of graphic design. I found there is a similar discrepancy with women studying graphic design compared to those actually working in the field. We see women passionate about design and studying design in a classroom setting, but there appears to be a barrier of entry in the field once a degree is earned.
Where does this barrier come from? While I’m only speculating, I do have two theories.
The “Designer’s Ego”
The first is that I’ve found that designers can have a bit of an ego, myself included. Students studying design begin on the same playing field. You don’t really need to be constantly asking for feedback or pushing to have your design voice heard because professors take a vested interest in giving each student equal attention. But when you enter into the workforce as a designer, you need to sell yourself, be confident, and develop your own personal brand. If you're not confident in the design decisions that you make about the look, feel, material, and curvature of an object, then nobody will believe that the design will sell. Men make those decisions more confidently. Obviously there are exceptions to the rule, but in my design groups, I’ve consistently seen men less willing to sway in their initial decision. Just the other day, when giving a fellow student feedback on their project, my approach differed greatly from my male colleague. He took a much more aggressive feedback approach, talking over me and the student. Though both of our opinions should have held equal weight, it is easier to feel as if one piece of advice is better based on how earnestly and confidently someone states their opinion.
Lack of Professional Female Network
My second theory stems from the the lack of women currently in the professional network. What’s even more fascinating than noticing who's sitting next to me in a lecture, is realizing who is standing at the front of the room. Only 12% of the professors in McCormick are women, less than half of the percentage of female students. I can’t name one female engineering professor I’ve had at Northwestern who I could go to for advice for women in technical fields, mostly because I haven’t had them. A recent study found that nearly 40% of women who studied engineering either quit the field or never entered at all. Most quoted organizational climate, characterized by non-supportive supervisors or co-workers and general incivility, as the number one reason they left the field. There needs to be a more supportive network of women in this field, and it should be a priority for companies to build up these networks. This all stems back to examples like that all male panel at Design Chicago. Where are the women who I can look up to and use for inspiration?
Hopefully, my fellow female students and I can one day fill that role. I am excited to have been surrounded by very talented male and female design focused students these past four years. Many of the same scenarios and feelings I expressed above can be said about the lack of cultural diversity. The Professional Association for Design sites that 86% of professional designers are caucasian. There needs to be more professional support for all minorities in this technical field. A product design will never reach it’s full potential without many insights drawn from a range of designer’s perspectives and experiences. Which leads me to think, what type of possible life altering designs are we missing out on? And soon we should reach a place where the question “How does it feel to be a woman in _____?” ceases to exist.
Sources:
Carol, Antionette. "Diversity & Inclusion in Design: Why Do They Matter?"AIGA. The Professional Association for Design, n.d. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.
Singh, Romila, Nadya A. Fouad, Mary E. Fitzpatrick, Jane P. Liu, Kevin J. Cappaert, and Catia Figuereido. "Stemming the Tide: Predicting Women Engineers' Intentions to Leave." Journal of Vocational Behavior 83.3 (2013): 281-94. Web.